(ADDED NOTE: I’m a third generation LDS/Saint/Mormon; this answer went to a “new” fellow member who was asking what happened to inspire my previous post, this was my answer:)
I got 3 windows each with 50 tabs open, and speakers on my computer zoned out a while back, so I don’t get the “beep” from FB anymore and even though FB still says I’m online, but I already moved to a different site. It’s sort of hard to keep track of me online, I zip back and forth so much. I was on Zazzle, not FB, so I didn’t see the messages til just now. Sorry.
Nope, didn’t know about the AS group. I’m still sort of new to getting out of the house, it’s kind of hard to get used to doing. I pretty much only ever leave to go to the writer’s meetings (NaNoWriMo and Screnzy) and to buy cat food and grain.
The guy that was yelling at me is from the Sanford ward. (It was yesterday). He’s the same one that was accusing me of writing “deframitory” letters to tons of people in the Sanford Ward, though he’s yet to be able to prove that any of those letters actually exist. So I don’t know if there really are letters I supposedly wrote or if that’s just some rumor. He’s sort of weird. I’m used to him showing up every once in a while. Bishop LR got after him about it a while back, and he stopped, but Sanford just changed bishops, so, I don’t know, I guess he thinks he can try it again. Anyways my mom emails him, (I guess she emails every body, because I’ve had to change my email 34 times as a result of her emailing people who than email me in a rage over whatever it is she has said at that moment.) and that’s usually what sets him off.
My mom showed up at the yard today, with the same accusations – witchcraft, proof being my lack of shoes. I don’t where she comes up with this from, but I guess seeing how she’s saying the same stuff the next day, that she’s the one who got him saying it. (He’s got mental problems and tends to repeat whatever he hears some one else say, so I’m not too worried about him, because I know he’s just parroting some thing he heard some one else say. It’s the person he’s repeating that bothers me.) But yeah, seeing how my mom showed up with the exact same accusation, I guess she’s the one who said it to him to begin with. After he accused me of the letters in Sanford, my mom showed up a few hours later that same day accusing me of letters in Saco, so I’m not sure what to think there. I’d still like to see one of these letters, because last time letters like that showed up, well, the only time letters like that showed up, and I actually saw one, it turned out that it was written by one of my mom’s brothers, not me, like every one thought. It’s the only time a letter ever actually came forward though, so I don’t believe the poison pen letter accusations half the time, because it’s so rare that they can ever provide proof that the letters they accuse me of writing, are even real at all.
I guess, it’s always my mom that gets people all wound up, at least from what I’m finding out these past few months. I know from what Bishop K said that it was my mom complaining to him, because he was quoting stuff, word for word the way my mom says them – demon possession, spell casting, curses, me being a witch. I’m just so sick of it. It hurts when people call me a witch or say I’m demon possessed, but than I’ve got Autism so they think I don’t have any feelings to hurt. 
I just never can understand how folks can believe her. The whole believing that demons and witches are real, is just something I can’t get my mind around. It’s so illogical. I can not understand how my mom or her brothers or Bishop M or Bishop K can believe in those things.
Of course, I don’t understand how come every time a new Bishop or Stake Pres comes in, I have to be retried all over again. Double Jeopardy is illegal in the USA. The first time I got called in for “apostasy”, “witch craft”, “demon possession” and consideration for excommunication was when I was just 12 years old. That was Bishop Re and Stake Pres S. Bishop Re is the one who got released after having a mental breakdown. Stake Pres. S said there was no ground to excommunicate me than, because I was neither witch nor demon possessed nor apostate.
Than Bishop Ri called me in about 2 years later, said complaints of demon possession and witchcraft had been made again, but that he was no going to do anything about it, because he did not believe the complaint.
Bishop M replaced him, and at the same time Stake Pres E took over for S and it stated all over again. That time Bishop M brought in doctors from Pine Land Center, he claimed I was not only a demon possessed witch, but that I was schizophrenic as well. He tried several times to have me excommunicated between the ages of 14 through 17, each time he didn’t get any where with it.
Bishop B wanted to have all 264 of us (me and my relatives) excommunicated and is the one who told me “white trash like you and the rest of the Atwater clan don’t belong in this church”. That happened 13 years ago and was why I stopped going to the Cape Elizabeth Ward.
Cape E Ward broke off and became the Portland and Saco Wards instead, but by that time I had started going to the Sanford Ward.
That was when the vandalism started in. At first it was just rock throwing and stuff, but than the dead animals and photos of guns started showing up. In 2003 the drive by paint ball shootings started. They messed up my horse really bad, tore out half of her face and cut out both her eyes. It got so bad that the OOB police stationed a motorcycle cop to patrol Portland Ave. That’s when I stopped going to the Sanford Ward, because the police offices said they had evidence that it was people from church behind the vandalism. They had a list of suspects, all of them were from one of 5 different churches – 3 of the churches being the Saco, Portland, and Sanford LDS Wards. That’s when the reports and paparazzi got involved, one of the officers contacted the state police and one of them called ABC. We had reporters and photographers all over our land for about 3 months. That’s when my agoraphobia set it. Between the vandals killing my pets and the paint ballers and the reporters asking me questions and the police constantly warning us about who to avoid – I just freaked out big time. I couldn’t handle it.
Between 2001 and 2004 we had court dates on an almost weekly basis. I went to the early ones, but as the reporters and such got more involved, I stopped going to them. The later court dates from 2003 – 2005 I did not attend, except for one in summer of 2005, when I had a total meltdown in the court and the judge sent me to a psychiatrist. That’s when I found out I had Autism (Shizotypal Aspergers with OCD tendencies).
After the court stuff ended, my mom got something like $20K in the settlement, that’s when the vandalism went out of hand and our house got burned down.
Next thing we know, DHS is at the tent and telling us about an FBI investigation into OOB town manager, and that there were about 40 families on Portland Ave and Walnut Str that were involved, most every one of them had lost their homes, nearly all of them had been driven out of town, they couldn’t handle the stress. It was DHS that told us about Thomas and the other folks from the Saco Ward being investigated because some $3million had been embezzled out of town funds. That’s how I found out that the town manager and the town council were all members of the Saco Ward. OOB had to get rid of every one working in the town hall, and I had to deal with gov workers asking me questions left and right, only I didn’t know anything about all that stuff so finally they stopped coming over. I never did understand all that stuff with the DHS and the FBI and the town manager. No one ever gave us much information, they just wanted to know what we knew about it. In any case, finding that stuff out, freaked me out even more, because the guy they were investigating was a high priest in the Saco ward and the OOB town manager. They had records of how he’d been run out of 4 states already and he was constantly going from state to state to evade them. Finding that out, just scared the hell out of me and after that, I just stopped trusting every one.
I mean, you think you can trust a high priest right? You think you can trust your town manager right? But than the police and DHS tell us that these people we thought we could trust were the ones behind all the violence and death, and it just shatters your ability to trust any one after that. Now I don’t know who I can trust any more. But than, when all this was going on, normally I would have turned to the church for help, but I don’t any more because every time I do, the members and leaders start calling me a witch and telling me I’ve no right to be in church. I still don’t understand why people call me a witch.
I know several complaints happen because of the whole color thing. I see these glowing colors around people, which I thought every one saw. I didn’t realize until my late teens that other folks did not see them, or that it freaked people out when I talked about seeing them. But the whole me being a witch and casting spells and curses comes from that, because there were several times when I told people *that person* is about to die, and than within a few hours to a few days they did. People freaked out and said I made those people die, but what happened was, your color leaves and dissapers before your die, and if I see someone with no color, I know they’ll die soon. I was only 5 or 6 years old when I used to say those things, so the accusations of witchcraft and curses started early. That’s how the rumor got started at least. But that’s Autism, not witchcraft, so I don’t see how they can use that to call me a witch.
Than of course my encounter with whatever it is that Etiole is, is what started the accusations of me being demon possessed. I may not know what it is that Etiole is, but I do know what he is not, and he most certainly is not a demon. I assume you must know about Etiole, since it seems like every one does, but if not, I wrote all about him here: http://www.squidoo.com/amphibious-aliens so many folks kept asking me for more info about him, that I finally just wrote it down and now instead of reanswering everyone I just direct them to that link. It’s easier. And, again, though not many folks have ever seen Etiole, a few have, and they were not witches any more than I am, so I don’t see how my contact with him could make me a witch or demon possessed. Ben’s thoughts on the matter are that people who call Etiole a demon are silly, because (according to Ben) Etiole is an alien, some sort of Gray Hybrid or some such thing. (When Ben is not being a high priest, he spends his time being a ufologist.) I’m not sure what to think of Ben’s whole alien/alien abduction theory, but at least it makes more logical sense than the demon possession theory my mom’s always preaching. Personally, I’ve always thought of Etiole as a Faerie, which I say to mean a natural all be it rare, cryptiod creature, not some supernatural being or an extraterrestrial.
My mom’s constant accusations that first my Dodge and now my Volvo, are possessed by demons, baffles me. I have no explanation for her reasoning, other than I guess she is suggesting that Etiole somehow possesses them. I don’t know. I think the accusation that my cars have demons is the least logical and most confusing of any of the accusations to date.
A few years ago, in about 2005, I decided to look into this whole witch thing, to try to find out why folks kept saying I was a witch, but after talking to several wiccan-witches, they all told me the same thing – that there was no way in hell I was a witch because I was so much of a “super Christian Jesus freak”. Last spring some folks online said they thought I was more of an old fashioned Christian, the type like followed Jesus when he was still alive, and that today they are called ChristoPagans, which are neither witches nor what modern tradition calls Christian. I don’t know. I can’t figure any of it out. Christian call me a witch and witches call me a Jesus Freak, neither accept me as an equal. But still, after looking into the whole witch/wicca thing, I still can’t figure out why folks keep calling me a witch, and neither could any of the witches I talked to. They said the witch accusation was most likely based on my mode of dress. They thought it was most likely that folks look at my clothes and assume I’m a witch because of the things I wear.
But I don’t understand that either. You see, my grandmother was an Indian. She was a Kickapoo and lived much of her life in Hawaii. Because of her culture she wore muu-muu and kimono and long robes and stuff. She didn’t want her culture to die, like most native cultures had, but she couldn’t remember most of her native heritage, but her clothe connected her to her ancestors, it was the only part of her culture she had ever been taught (she was an orphan, in a time when Indians were still “red skin savages” so a lot of her culture history was lost.). As an adult she traveled around the world looking for information about her family history. That’s why she spent a lot of time in Hawiaii and Japan. I spent most of my childhood with her, because my mom was always in the hospital, and so, I grew up wearing muu-muus and kimono and robes and stuff, because that’s the way our native culture dressed. When she died in 1994, I inherited everything, including her collection of antique Hawaiian muu-muus and Japanese Kimono, which is what I have worn ever since I inherited them. The way I dress has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with my Native American culture, so I don’t understand why people look at the way I dress and call me a witch because of my cloths.
So, I mean, I can see where they are basing the witch accusations from (the Autism, Etiole, and my clothes), but I just can’t understand how they can actually believe such nonsense as to think I am a witch, because none of those things makes me a witch on their own, and even all three together can’t classify me as a witch either.
Bishop K did a lot of complaining about my cloths the day he called me to his office. I tried to explain about my grandmother, but my ability to speak coherently is not good. I’ve always had trouble making words come out of my mouth properly and that’s why I write things down instead. He kept saying I was a witch and putting spells on church members, and than he’d comment about my cloths.
The witch accusation upset me. I’ve gone through this every time a new bishop comes in. I don’t know who it is that runs to every bishop complaining about me and calling me a witch, but this has happened with 16 bishops and 3 stake presidents now. Every time I get told I’m a demon possessed witch casting spells and curses. Every time it’s eventually found out the accusations are false. Every time the monthly, sometimes weekly meetings with the bishop and stake pres drag on for 6 or 7 months. Double Jeopardy is illegal in the USA. You can’t retry some one for a crime they were already tried for and proven innocent. And yet, here we go again, with bishop number 16 and stake pres number 3. That’s double jeopardy 16 times! Why? I’ve already been dragged before 15 different counsels, each time with the same accusation of apostasy and witchcraft and excommunication threats. Sixteen times since I was 12 years old! Each time has 6 or 7 meetings. WHY? Why do I have to go through this every time a new bishop or a new stake pres comes into the ward?
Do you have any idea how stressful this is? And people keep asking me why I don’t come back to church? Why should I? What incentive is there for me to attend meetings at church, when I won’t get the chance to attend half of meetings because I’m too busy being called into the bishop’s office where I get accused of being a witch? Most of the meetings took place on Sunday, they’s take me right out of Primary or Young Woman’s classes. I missed more than half of my Sunday meetings because I had to sit in the bishop’s office every Sunday being told I was some evil apostate witch. How can they expect me to want to go to church when I’m not allowed to attend the meetings when I do come in?
I used to go to whatever ward Ben was attending, but I’ve been with him since I was 12, (he’s 30 years older than me) which in the Cape Elez Ward no one cared much about that, a few folks complained, but not many and no one did anything about it. In the Sanford Ward though, one of the members was a DHS social worker, and some how she found out about how old I was when I started going out with Ben, and even though I was 27 by the time she found out about it, she raised hell for him, she wanted him to be put in prison and tried to get me to press charges against him, she really went overboard about it and he got into a lot of trouble and he almost got excommunicated over it, and now he’s terrified to be seen in church with me.
I don’t know why she flipped out like that, because I was 27 years old at the time, yeah I was 12, but well, if she had ever read the church handbook, the church puts 12 years old as the legal marriage age, so, whatever. Anyways, Ben is just terrified out of his mind over the whole ordeal and that’s why he called off the wedding a few weeks before the wedding date. (He has huge phobia problems, and the DHS threats made them worse.) A lot of folks in the Sanford Ward threatened to never speak to him again if we got married, so now he hides the fact that we are together. We were supposed to get married in the temple, but they would not allow it. They took Ben’s temple recommend away and said I was not allowed to have on on grounds of “mental incompetency”. Some folks called me a “grave digger” and others called me a “gold digger” and others said I was with Ben because I wanted to be “a lovely young widow”. Uhm . . . at the time Ben had A LOT of money. His dad is one of the wealthiest men in Kennebunk Port. I did not know all of that at the time though, because I had never meet Ben’s dad and Ben had never once in those first 15 years ever mentioned his job or money. I had no idea he had all that money, not until folks in the Sanford Ward started saying those things to me. Their words hurt me more than anything else ever could. Of course, since than, Ben has lost all that money, and well, I proved them wrong because all these years later, I’m still with him.
But that’s why I stopped going to the Sanford Ward. The whole freak out over the 30 year age difference was a really big issue for people there, though I still don’t understand why. That happened 7 years ago and I had hoped that they had calmed down some about our huge age difference. I went back to Sanford once this last summer, and well, let’s just say I was most diffenatly not welcomed there. I was there all of 10 minutes before Ben had to rush me out of the building and we left. Ben didn’t dare go back to church for a few weeks after that, so I haven’t tried going back to Sanford since. It’s really upsetting that people can hate me like that, just because I’m 30 years younger than Ben. It’s the one thing of all of everything, that has bothered me more than anything else. I want so desperately to attend church with Ben again, but I’m not allowed to, people just go nuts when they see us together. That upsets me more than the witch accusations from the Cape Elizabeth and Saco Wards do.
So, I just don’t go to church at all any more, as you can see, for a lot of reasons. The witch and demon accusations I could ignore. I sort of grew up with them, and while they hurt my feelings and stress me out, I’ve sort of gotten used to them. I try to ignore them. It’s the accusations involving me and Ben and our age difference, that upsets me most of all. I find it very hard to ignore these, because they effect our relationship. They stress Ben and, he just does not deal with stress well at all. He freaks out and goes into hiding and doesn’t dare to contact anyone, not even me – uhm, yeah, he has all sorts of alien abduction fears and stuff, and rambles on ufo stuff all the time, and whenever any one freaks him out, he just goes super paranoid, and the whole deal with folks freaking out over our age difference sort of freaked him out worse than most other stuff does, and seeing him get all upset over it, made me even more upset than I already was over it. So all in all, that hurts my feelings and upsets me more than the witch accusations do. And, well, if they are not going to let me attend church with Ben anymore, and over such a stupid reason just because he’s 30 years older than me, than really, I’ve lost all desire to go to church at all now, because I have a hard time seeing how Jesus would think well of a church that breaks up families, the way folks there are trying to break up me and Ben. Me an Ben have been together for 22 years. We meet in church. Church was such a big thing for us. We attending every meeting – the morning meetings the evening meetings (the church stopped doing the double meetings in the mid 1980′s) and all the week day meetings. We used to come do the landscaping, and cleaning the building, and repairing the roof, and decorating for youth dances, etc. For years we spent an average of 12 to 15 hours a week in church. That was in Cape Elizabeth, before they consolidated the Cape Elizabeth and Portland Wards.
The Cape Elizabeth Ward does not exist any more, it got folded into the Portland Ward in about 1995-ish, the same time the Cornish Ward broke off of it. Most of the folks I knew ended up in the Cornish Ward. Than Saco Broke off of Portland a few years later. I don’t know any body in the Portland and Saco Wards today, it’s all new folks now. And that’s what really gets me – I mean, how do people there even know who I am? I asked Johnny that, and he said it’s because me mom is constantly talking about me. According to Johnny, my mom is “obsessed with you” he said. He added “you should hear her at Wayne’s house, she talks about you all day long”. I asked Ben, if he knew anything about that, because, I rarely ever see my mom – like months and months and months go by, between seeing her. Ben told me that she emails him almost daily, and than he forwarded her emails to me – I was stunned! Every one of them was her talking about me and how “evil” I was. She used the words “evil” and “nasty” over and over again to describe me and spent a lot of time talking about my Twighlight Manor books. I found that fact interesting, considering she has yet to read one of my TM books and half the stuff she said I had written in them was not true. Oh well.
I’ve since found out that she has been emailing copies of these same emails to several of my uncles and, some one named “Corbet”, Johnny said that that is some woman from church. Don’t know, never heard of her, so I don’t know why my mom would be saying all that stuff to her. (I found out, because when Ben forwarded the emails to me, all the email addresses my mom had sent the email too was in the box). I don’t know. I just don’t understand it.
I just realized how long this got. Uhm. Yeah, I guess I’ve been writing for the last 2 hours. Whoops. Sorry about that. I guess I should go before I end up writing a whole book here. =P
Well, that’s weird. I just noticed that FB pulled up the link to my Squidoo lens. Didn’t know it did that. Well, there’s a picture of Etiole there. LOL! I spend most of my time on Squidoo and Zazzle and Zanga so I so rarely use IMs, emails, or messages, I’m not too sure how they work I’m afraid. I guess it pulled up the link, like on the status box, because I typed it a ways back. Whatever.
Waiting for Emmett to come.
http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com
http://eelkat.wordpress.com
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/132659
http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/user/132659
